risk-averse. It's not that they are bad peo- ple. Every incentive they have is to over- censor. If someone under-censors and lets something slip through, his head is in a noose with his bosses." Stone added, "It's just the inevitable craziness of the mind-set of censorship." Stone has spent the last three years thinking about questions like this one, as he worked on a new book, "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism," which will be published next month. His immersion in the subject proved alternately heartening and de- pressing. "The only time the federal gov- ernment has tried to restrict criticism of government policies or officers is during wartime," he said last week, in his office at the New York University Law School, where he is a visiting professor. "In eighty per cent of our history; happily, there has been no effort to restrict that kind of expression." But Stone found the persistence of wartime censorship-and what he views as its underlying function-troubling. "Censorship is attractive because it doesn't cost billions of dollars, and it sends the message that we are serious," he said. "If you want to create an atmosphere in which people are willing to go off and die in a war, censorship is an effective way of making them feel that it's worth it." He pointed out that being at war has moved even otherwise ardent defenders of free speech, such as President Wood- row Wilson, to change their positions. "Wilson had been very articulate about free speech before the First World War, but then he had a war where we had not been attacked and needed a way to motivate people, just like the war we have now," Stone said, referring to Wilson's notorious Committee on Public Infor- . " Th " matI on. e patterns recur. So, it seems, do the absurdities. Ear- lier this summer, the government yielded on some of its more preposterous redac- tions in the Patriot Act case, like the quotation from the Supreme Court, but the A. C.L. U. is still not allowed to dis- close such mundane facts as the identity of its client, who is now referred to only as "an Internet service provider." (The U.S. Attorney's office declined to com- ment.) However, the government has made some changes in the way it goes about marking up documents. "We're 64 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 27, 2004 finding that in other cases the censors are apparently realizing that it looks re- ally bad when they delete large sec- tions with that black Magic Marker," the A.C.L.U.'s Beeson said. "So now they are starting to use whiteout instead." -Jeffrey Toobin PUBLICATION DAY SWING VOTER w H arry Kourounis, who has been shut- tling business tycoons and celebri- ties around New York City in limousines and town cars since 1982, has a saying: "First-rate people get first-class service, and second-rate people get first-class ser- vice." Last week, he provided his first- class service to the biographer Kitty Kel- ley, who was in town for a few days to promote her latest unauthorized work, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." Kourounis considers Kelley "first-rate all the way;" though, in light of her irreverent portraits of such Republican icons as Frank Sinatra and the Reagans, he guessed that her political views didn't jibe with his own. Kourounis's busiest day-not to men- tion Kelley's-was Tuesday; the official release date of "The Family;" whose seven hundred and five pages are filled with al- legations of cocaine use, infidelity; nepo- tism, mendacity, and general crummi- ness. Just before seven in the morning, Kourounis picked up Kelley; her hus- band, her agent, her editor, and her pub- licist at a hotel off Columbus Circle. "Harry, have you heard from your daughter-in-law?" she asked him. " N d " h . d ot to ay; e Sill . "She has a master's and a Ph.D., right?" Kelley said. ,, , d h ' ki wo master s, an s e s wor ng on her Ph.D." "She sounds like a brilliant girl." "I think the two of you would get along, most definitel " Kelley is a diminutive woman with a blond bob, a heart-shaped face, and large blue eyes. She is sixty-two, but she still has a quality that might be called pix- ieish. Wearing black sling-back Manolo Blahniks and a gray pants suit with a brooch shaped like either a flower or a jellyfish, Kelley seemed ready for a day whose schedule included eight inter- views, a working breakfast, a few errands, and a book party; followed by a runner in her honor. "I love publication day;" she said. "It's like a combination of your first Holy Communion, your bat mitzvah, and being queen of the prom." In this particular instance, there were also elements of excommunication, cross- examination, and sorority rush. Disdain for her work came in many varieties, all of which she parried with characterically co- quettish aplomb. First off; there was the strenuous disapproval of Matt Lauer, on the "Today" show: "Most people, no mat- ter what their politics, wotÙd say that, if a family has three generations of pub- lic service, the reality has to be that there are some nice things that need to be said about them. And why aren't they in the book? . . . Where are the positives, Kitty?" (Mterward, her husband remarked, "I would have said, 'Hey; Matt, who does your hair?'" Kelley replied, "Oh, honey, you're getting feisty and protective. How sweet.") On CNN, she weathered genial put-downs from Aaron Brown: "Saying that a Kitty Kelley book is an unauthorized biography is like saying what bank robber Willie Sutton did was make unauthorized withdrawals." AI Franken, on Air America Radio, went relatively easy on her during the interview, then, when it was over, held up the author's photograph on the back of the book, and said to her, "Wow; you look great there-what the fuck happened?" Mter one interview, her editor said, "You know what bothers the press about you?" "I'm short and I'm fat?" Kelley said. "They don't get what you get. And they're jealous." If Kourounis, a balding, solidly built man with a handlebar mustache, was aware of the controversy surrounding his passenger, he didn't show it. He talked about coming to this country from Greece, in 1958, and about his house in Florida, where he hopes to go in November to vote in the general election. "I don't think Bush is sharp enough to run the country; but I'll probably vote for him," Kourounis said. "There's just something about Kerry I don't like." Kourounis confessed that he had voted, against his better judgment, for Michael Dukakis in 1988, because of their shared heritage and because "I knew